OK, I want you to read this part very carefully because I feel like something gets lost when I say this.
When Two Mixed Up opened, their single "Just A Burger" was US$18 and there was no mention as to whether it came with a side or anything. That does not mean there was no side, this means that the menu doesn't mention it. That's all.
Well, I guess after... let's say "a while", they dropped the price of the burger down to US$15 and explicitly stated that it comes with fries and a drink. Now, I am known for pissing and moaning about a fifteen dollar sandwich, you know this about me. But a fifteen dollar meal? OK, I can investigate that.
After not hitting up my bookie, plug, and pimp last week some careful spending with my last paycheck, I figured I could have a little fun, just a little, and stop being a hater and finally boop myself into Two Mixed Up so I could say with some measure of authority whether it's any good.
Let me preface this by saying they were having an off day, down some staff. Two people to run the whole show. The woman who took my order was clearly harried and greeted me by alerting me to the staff shortage and the expected longer-than-usual wait times in a robotic cadence that I knew from my own days in customer service was the result of having to say this shit over and over again. So I give her all of my sympathies and I do not care that I was the third rang up and the seventh served.
I took my cup to the fountain - which sounds like a line from a Leonard Cohen song - and got a Pepsi Zero and that was flat as fuck. OK, dump that out, get the Dr. Pepper. It was clear. OK, dump that out. Crush. Orange fucking Crush. Give me that one.
Flat.
OK, there's only two of them but maybe somebody should pop in back and change the carbon dioxide tank and I have to say "carbon dioxide" because there's no subscript option in Blogger nor is there a Altcode command for a subscript "2" (don't tell me about Alt+8322, I tried that shit three times) and if you ever took Mrs. Sloma's science classes in Bowling Green, Ohio in the late nineties, you know that writing it out as "CO2" is wrong as hell and is going to cost you a point. Maybe I could say Cee Oh Two but, come on, man... Come on.
Oh! I guess I could just copy and paste one! Let me... OK... and...
CO₂.
Oh.
OK, well, still, the sodypop was flat.
Cut to where I see lil homie on the flat top put together my burger, the Just A Burger, described on the menu as
lettuce, tomato, onion, American cheese, and TMU house sauce
... but I held the lettuce, not because of the diarrhea going around (thanks, RFK Jr.) but because I usually always hold the lettuce.
The way New Man wishes he got to hold this Lettuce.
ANYhoo, I have never seen this move in my life: After lil homie smashes the absolute shit out of my patty and throws a slice of cheese on it, where it just sits in the middle and melts in a square shape, he picks up my patty using two bench scrapers and turns 180° (Why is there an Alt code for the degree symbol but not a subscript 2?) away from the flat top and lays my patty on the awaiting bun prepped in the to-go box. Like, why is your mise en place all scattered and shit, my guy?
But then my order was ready to go, our harried cashier (who was working on the grill and fry station, too) handed me my order and thanked me for my patience and I told her to have a better day and I left and I ate my burger in the skyway.
And, man, if they weren't getting their asses kic- Actually, it wasn't like the place was swarmed. Like maybe a third full. But, OK, not the ideal staffing but... But wasn't this place originally a food truck? Where you can fit only two people in the back? To serve about - What's the average amount of people lined up at a popular food truck? I would say I've seen five. Like, on average, five people. On the downtown streets, at festivals and fairs... Five people. In the brick and mortar location, there were maybe nine people? All just calmly waiting. Nobody screaming or "Miss? Miss? How much longer?"-ing. Just chilling. It was cool. It's not like this was a huge deviation from the original operating procedure, unless homegirl wasn't there in the food truck era.
So, I was about to say, if they weren't getting their asses kicked, I would wonder why my burger was just... edible and why my fries were unevenly seasoned but they weren't getting their asses kicked so why was my...
It's like this: My burger patty tasted more of char than flesh, my fries were individually either covered in (I'm assuming) Lawry's or just butt-ass naked, and my Orange Crush was flat. After tax & tip, this was US$19.21. On my way through the skyway, I thought I was going to say this food was "aggressively mid" but when I write down my i- fine, type out my issues with the food, I can see that, yeah, those are the kinds of things that can disappoint a motherfucker. And I would have been disappointed, yeah, if I had had any sort of expectations for the place. I mean I'm disappointed that I can't have that twenty dollars back.
If you told me you loved this place, I'd say, "Oh, OK, cool."
If you told me you were going to this place, I'd say, "Oh, OK."
If you asked me if I wanted to come with you to this place, I'd say, "You know what I'm in the mood for? [insert the name of literally any other restaurant here with an exclamation point so it sounds like I'm really enthusiastic about it]"
If you asked me what I thought of this place, I'd have to say, "I can name you three places right now where you can get better for cheaper."
I will grant you that this was my one and only experience with this place on what the one staff member was saying was an off day but the essentially twenty dollar price tag does not encourage me to return for an optimal day.
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